Walsall Council predicts £700k overspend in children's services
Walsall Council is predicting it could overspend by more than £700,000 in children's services by the end of the financial year.
The £721,000 overspend is set to be discussed by the authority's Education Overview and Scrutiny Committee at 6pm today.
A report set to go to the meeting says that £178,000 in reserves will be used to reduce the overspend.
And an action plan will be implemented to further reduce the overspend to £110,000.
Of the overspend, £380,000 is due to home to school transport, while £110,000 is due to temporary posts for children with special educational needs and £53,000 will be redundancy for two members of staff.
School inclusion will cost £57,000, temporary workers on the admissions team will cost £50,000 and special educational needs support will be a further £61,000.
Councillor Chris Towe, portfolio holder for education and skills, said: "These things are demand-led, we don't want overspend but when it happens we have to deal with what is in front of us and manage the budget as best as we can to stop these costs incurring.
"We do say to the officers we expect the budget to be as close as we can.
"Where children are concerned we have to ensure the funding needed is available."
